Tired of Being Defined by Others, G.O.P. Women Speak for Themselves

WASHINGTON — When Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers took a position in the House Republican leadership after the 2012 elections, she knew she had a lot of work to do. Her party had just lost multiple key constituencies, and she was particularly bothered by the party’s poor standing with women.

“I found that our brand was so damaged that it was almost like they couldn’t even hear us,” said Ms. McMorris Rodgers, of Washington State, who juggles considerable responsibilities on Capitol Hill with three young children age 8 and under.

Acutely aware that the Democrats will most likely have a woman at the top of their ticket in 2016, Ms. McMorris Rodgers and some of her female colleagues undertook an ambitious campaign — and an unconventional one by Washington standards. They decided to reach out to women via women’s magazines and new media, hoping to connect with them in grocery store aisles and through popular online forums.

They recorded some success with upbeat tales of Republican women scattered through the pages of publications such as Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire and, most recently, Elle.

Now she and her colleagues face not only the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, but also the businessman Donald J. Trump as their own standard-bearer. They fear that his well-documented negative remarks about women could unravel all of their efforts to cast Republican women in a positive light.

A new CNN/ORC poll found that 73 percent of registered female voters in the United States had an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump, and 31 percent of Republican women would be upset if Mr. Trump won.

“I think his comments regarding women and other comments, I find them inappropriate,” Ms. McMorris Rodgers said in an interview. “I find them hurtful and I think they are hurtful to the party, a party that has been founded on equal opportunity for all.”

In remarks that echoed Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s call for a change in the harsh tone that has dominated the Republican primary season, she added: “We need to be focusing on a positive message and lifting the rhetoric up from the divisive rhetoric that is dominating now. It doesn’t belong in politics, in doesn’t belong in our homes and it doesn’t belong in our workplace.”

Ms. McMorris Rodgers, 46, is officially the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, which makes her the No. 4 House Republican and the top Republican woman in congressional leadership. One of her jobs is to develop the overarching message of House Republicans — it is the position that former Speaker John A. Boehner first held on the leadership ladder. And when Mr. Boehner announced his retirement last year, she briefly considered trying to move up to the No. 2 slot, but quickly decided to stay where she was.

From her current position, she is pushing back against the idea that the Democratic Party, with Mrs. Clinton leading on the campaign trail and Representative Nancy Pelosi leading in the House, represents the default political home for women.

“I think it is important that we respect that women have different political views,” said Ms. McMorris Rodgers, a strong conservative who grew up picking fruit in her family’s orchard in eastern Washington and became the 200th woman ever elected to the House. “The idea that just because you are a woman you should be supporting Hillary Clinton I think is false. There is a broad base of political views.”

Hoping to impart some of those to a wider audience, Ms. McMorris Rodgers and her advisers decided to go through popular women’s magazines and websites such as Refinery29, a lifestyle site, and BlogHer. The latter site recently hosted a town-hall-style forum featuring Ms. McMorris Rodgers and Republican Representatives Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Mimi Walters of California discussing the Republican agenda.

Pam Stevens, a former CNN producer who is a media strategist for the House Republican conference, also began pitching stories about congressional Republican women to top women’s magazines. It was not an easy sell, she recalled, noting that some editors at magazines with a history of strongly embracing abortion rights were not so sure that anti-abortion women lawmakers were a good fit for their audience.

“I really had to work it, work it, work it,” Ms. Stevens said.

The effort has paid off. The story of how Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, struggled through a divorce and was raising three young children on her own before reconnecting with a Marine she first met at a high school dance was featured in January’s Good Housekeeping. The January issue of Elle contained a profile on Representative Martha McSally, a former fighter pilot from Arizona, and emphasized some of her practical political views under the headline: “Martha McSally is Not That Kind of Republican.”

The new issue of Elle includes Ms. McMorris Rodgers in a list of the “10 Most Compelling Women in Washington Now,” including her with the likes of Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. It points out that Ms. McMorris Rodgers is the champion of legislation that would provide more funding for the National Institutes of Health and ease approval of new drugs.

“I think that it is important that we are reaching women on platforms where they are getting their news and information,” she said, adding that the effort was “pretty cool.”

“It gives you a different impression of Republicans, right?”

She just has to hope that impression overcomes the one Mr. Trump is leaving with some women voters.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Tired of Being Defined by Others, G.O.P. Women Speak for Themselves . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe